Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

hollywoodreporter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–66 of 66 posts

Re: German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

#61

Post by hef19898 »

mhd wrote: post #50
hef19898 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too, the Bavaria part, and yes, we only technically count ;-). The only hope i have in the long run for the pirates, or whatever name the movement adopts one day, is that they are not going the way of any new party and turn the new greens eventually.

Considering that the biggest problem the Greens have right now is that basically every other party is pretty keen on environmental issues, too, and so they've become somewhat superfluous, I wouldn't mind the same happening to the pirates ;)

If you see it like that, you're right! I rather meant the fact that the green turned into yet another mainstream party with the same political infighting.

Re: German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

#62

Post by atesti »

vidarh wrote: post #30
davidw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One serious flaw of the proportional system, like Italy and Israel both have, is that a small party can be the deciding vote, and have a much larger weight than it merits. For instance: center-left party gets 48% of the vote, communists (they still exist here) get 4% of the vote. To form a majority, the large party must strike a deal with the small party, which can dictate conditions... This happens regularly in Ital…

> For instance: center-left party gets 48% of the vote, communists (they still exist here) get 4% of the vote. To form a majority, the large party must strike a deal with the small party, which can dictate conditions... Or they simply look for someone on the other side. E.g. in Germany, SPD (social democrats) routinely ignore Left (socialists and communists) and instead deals with the conservative CDU. It's not like…

>For that matter, this shouldn't just change at 50% either - having parties representing 50% + 1 dictate policy still leaves half the population subject to the whims of a narrow majority.

One should also note that even if one party in Germany were to have more than 50%, they still don't have a very stable power:

Each member of the parlament could vote against his party. So for a stable gonverment, they would need to have a bit more than 50%

Re: German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

#63

Post by davidw »

nextparadigms wrote: post #60
davidw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One serious flaw of the proportional system, like Italy and Israel both have, is that a small party can be the deciding vote, and have a much larger weight than it merits. For instance: center-left party gets 48% of the vote, communists (they still exist here) get 4% of the vote. To form a majority, the large party must strike a deal with the small party, which can dictate conditions... This happens regularly in Ital…

I don't think that's such a huge problem, and I think it may even be preferable than the small party only having proportional power. The reason for that is that if they only had proportional power, small parties wouldn't be able to accomplish anything, ever.

> The reason for that is that if they only had proportional power, small parties wouldn't be able to accomplish anything, ever.

In the case of hammer-and-sickle flag waving communists, or racist apologists for Mussolini, that might be seen as a good thing.

Re: German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

#64

Post by davidw »

cabalamat wrote: post #56
davidw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what you say is explicitly not true in Italy, Italy has fiddled with its election laws a lot in recent years, and is probably going to do so again, so what may be true right now may not have been true in year WXYZ. What I say certainly has happened in the past: witness the downfall of the previous Prodi governments, where support from minority coalition partners tanked the government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R…

> Coalition governments built on many small parties are often weak. If by weak you mean "cannot rule without support of representatives who collectively were voted for by most voters" then IMO that's a feature not a bug. > Often through relatively open primaries though. Witness the Republican race on right now. That's true. There's no reason why a party couldn't choose list candidates through an open process, however…

I mean 'weak' in the sense that they often fall apart, causing lots of waste and shuffling of chairs.

Re: German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

#65

Post by eli_gottlieb »

vidarh wrote: post #30
davidw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One serious flaw of the proportional system, like Italy and Israel both have, is that a small party can be the deciding vote, and have a much larger weight than it merits. For instance: center-left party gets 48% of the vote, communists (they still exist here) get 4% of the vote. To form a majority, the large party must strike a deal with the small party, which can dictate conditions... This happens regularly in Ital…

> For instance: center-left party gets 48% of the vote, communists (they still exist here) get 4% of the vote. To form a majority, the large party must strike a deal with the small party, which can dictate conditions... Or they simply look for someone on the other side. E.g. in Germany, SPD (social democrats) routinely ignore Left (socialists and communists) and instead deals with the conservative CDU. It's not like…

It sounds nice, but in places like Israel you end up with governments headed by a party that took just about a 15% mandate, coalescing with two partners that took a 13% mandate and a shit-ton of small single-issue parties that got something like 3% each. One Member of the Knesset deciding to swing can topple the government or force a coalition realignment.

Re: German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory

#66

Post by eli_gottlieb »

eru wrote: post #40
vidarh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For instance: center-left party gets 48% of the vote, communists (they still exist here) get 4% of the vote. To form a majority, the large party must strike a deal with the small party, which can dictate conditions... Or they simply look for someone on the other side. E.g. in Germany, SPD (social democrats) routinely ignore Left (socialists and communists) and instead deals with the conservative CDU. It's not like…

In practice, they use the 5% threshold in Germany to keep the number of parties down to a reasonable limit. Israel doesn't have this limit. I don't know whether they have a limit at all, or whether it's just rather low. I don't like the arbitrariness of the 5% threshold. But it seems to work.

Last I heard, Israel has a 2% limit.
Post reply on HN